Salt and Sympathy
The Year 7 Academic Scholars in their first meetings of the year, were examining the village of Saltaire in West Yorkshire. Founded in the mid 19th century, by Sir Titus Salt and situated next to the River Aire and the Leeds Liverpool canal, this was a so called “Utopian Village” ( rather like Bourneville near Birmingham).
The factory at Saltaire was surrounded, by parks, pleasant houses, reading rooms, refectories and a new non conformist church. The students began to think about why this location was selected and used some contemporary examples of where particular industries are located, in order to give them a sense of perspective. They also considered why some Mill owners, like Salt treated their workers better than many of their contemporaries and avoided the kind of practices illustrated in the picture below.
In the spirit of the Scholarship programme, the students did some science as they examined how steam engines worked and in the next session will do some economics as they consider how mills fitted into the overall economic system of the time.
In Year 9 the scholars will visit Saltaire as part of their trip to Yorkshire.
